The Bullpen Banter: Cadillacs and Rain Turtles
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Welcome back to the Bullpen Banter for episode #2!
In this episode, we have our home opener with a Cadillac escort, a matchup against Tim Tebow, and the introduction of the rain turtle.
This is a long entry, so rather than have me ramble, let’s just jump right in.
4/20/17
Hi Everyone,
After week 1, I added 15–20 people to the mailing list, so if you know of anyone else, just let me know. We just hopped on an 8am bus to Greensboro, NC for tonight’s 7pm game, so I have plenty of time to update everyone on what happened during our 7-game home stand.
Let us begin with our home opening day (4/13). Fans love it. The owners love it. I don’t. Yes, sold out crowds are fun, but on opening day, every team schedules all sorts of charades that alter your pregame routine.
Example A: In Augusta, the local car salesman (I refuse to give him free advertising here) paid to have us all delivered to home plate via Cadillac. Instead of preparing for our game, we were divided into alphabetical groups of 4 and placed into Cadillacs. The Cadillacs would then drive around the warning track one-by-one, and as our name was announced, we would exit the vehicle and proceed to the foul line for the national anthem. While it seems great, there were a two problems:
1. The first player was Fernando Acevedo. Acevedo speaks negative English. As a matter of fact, Fernando is from such a rural part of the Dominican Republic that he speaks different slang than the other DR guys. While most Latin guys could follow the American in front of them, Acevedo could not because he was first. It was quite the operation trying to explain what would happen, and when we suggested to the owner we let Adams go before Acevedo, she screamed at us. Apparently, Augusta Greenjackets fans are quite sticklers when it comes to the alphabet.
2. The entire process took 40 minutes prior to game time.
Regardless, we made it through Opening day on Thursday, and on Friday we had another sold out crowd. While I was pitching that night, our entire home crowd of 5,000 started chanting “Te-Bow, Te-Bow, Te-Bow”, so thanks for the loyalty Augusta. Appreciate that. Tebow stinks anyways.
Update: Jokes on me. Tebow made it to AA and is still playing. I ended up striking him out. Boom. Roasted.
After the game, we had a debacle. While changing during post-game, I noticed an unfamiliar face in our locker room taking pictures (with guys changing in the background). A few minutes later, I confronted the drunk guy in our tunnel, and when I asked him what he was doing, he took off. Upon leaving the tunnel, he told his buddies “they are on my ass like grass!!!” I have 0 clue what that means, but by the time we alerted security, he was gone.
The next day, we had a huge rat scare. The board said there was a rat in the locker room. After we spent a full hour of shaking clothes, lifting tables, and other ransacking, Captain (our clubhouse manager) smashed pans together and gave a speech. Apparently, someone called a higher up to complain about the locker room food instead of confronting him. Thank gosh it was not a real rat. Crisis averted. Sidenote: Thoughts & Prayers to the “rat” when Captain finds out. He won’t actually fight them I do not think, but he won’t do your laundry for weeks. Talk about stinky.
I am not sure the rat was ever fully discovered by Captain. I do, however, know who it was, and I think Captain would have won that fight, so it is probably for the best.
Fast forward to Easter! It is safe to say that our team was scared to face Tebow on Easter. He hit a homerun off my buddy the first day of the season. Then he hit a HR off of us on Palm Sunday. It was a huge sigh of relief that he didn’t hit 1,000,000 HRs against us on Easter. He did, however, to 1–4 with 3RBIs.
Funny story. Tebow hit a homerun on his first at-bat against my roommate. My roommate happened to be one of the few people I knew without social media. When we got onto the bus that night, he goes “is it all over Twitter?”
I promptly lied and said “Nah man. Not really.”
Two minutes later, a teammate yelled, “Wow! Tebow’s homerun is allllll over Sportscenter.”
Well, I tried.
After the game was great! Uncle Bill and Aunt Pat brought me out to dinner, and we had a great time. Aunt Pat even left me with a good care package that my roommates and I truly appreciated. When the biweekly paycheck is ~$450, the free food is a game changer, so shoutout to them. In addition, Easter is 10 times better when you can share it with family, so I was extremely thankful for that!
Speaking of family, quick shoutout to cousin Annie Mac!! She has been conquering Leukemia this past year. By conquering, I mean she has given it an absolute beatdown. She continued this with an awesome speech at a Dana Farber event. If you haven’t heard it, definitely worth trying to look up. At the moment, I don’t have the link, so I apologize.
Annie ultimately lost her battle in the fall of 2019. Originally, I planned to delete this, but I kept it for two reasons:
1. Oddly, I think this gives a brief peak into the nastiness of cancer. She HAD given it a beatdown. She WAS crushing it. It just came back.
2. I never want to miss an opportunity to promote Annie’s cause. She is my hero. Here is her speech. Definitely worth the watch.
Finally, over the last few days we struggled with rain. I watched our grounds crew try to figure out the tarp pull for 20 minutes while it poured. The second they started to pull it over the field, the rain stopped, and they had to fold it back up. The expletives were audible from 100ft away. After all of that, I am sure they weren’t stoked to see the bullpen Rain Turtle. For those of you who do not know, Rain Turtles are crucial. I am capitalizing it right now out of pure respect.
So what is a Rain Turtle? I am glad you asked! When rain is looming and you need a rainout/day off, you draw a huge sea turtle in the dirt. The bigger, the better. A Rain Turtle cannot be too big. You need the head, the legs, the tail, and a shell with designs on it. IMMEDIATELY after its construction, everyone present must spit in it!!! With no spit, there is no rain. Then you have a dry Rain Turtle, and that is sad. That is how you end up playing a full 9 innings. This time, the Rain Turtle did not come through, but next time he will!!
There have been zero scientific studies on the efficacy of rain turtles. This is likely because they conclusively work, and any effort to try and fact check that would be a waste of time. Here is a rain turtle in action
Because this has gotten too long, I need to wrap it up. I will finish with our big controversy in the Bullpen (aka Bro-pen). We did a gum challenge with Double Bubble gum. Kip Adams (aka Franchise) and Ben Smith (aka Big Country) both finished with 16 pieces of gum in their mouth at the same time before their jaws almost seized up. In addition, it was the 6th inning, so we had to stop. While it would appear to be a tie, Kip used sugar-free gum, and Smith used regular. I think that gives Smith the win, but I am sure Kip’s dentist would disagree. Quite the controversy.
If “Kip Adams” and “Ben Smith” were not a sign that I am using a random name generator, then I do not know what is. Listen, I am trying my best. I am not a name wizard.
Also, for the first six innings of a game, the bullpen is the wild west. Anything goes. That’s why relievers that come into the game in the second or third innings look disheveled. They are. Joking aside, relievers would burn out if they had to focus every pitch for 140 games. They may not pitch every game, but they are likely on call (referred to as “hot) every game. You actually have to build a routine and find time to relax.
Anyways, thanks for reading if you made it this far. Minor League Stats will be included below, and if you have any suggestions, let me know. I will try to make the next one shorter. Love y’all and thanks for reading!
Minor League Stats:
PB&Js 18
Logged Bus Hours: 33
Greenjackets Record: 5–9
Total Rain Turtle Opportunities: 1
Total Rain Outs: 0
Rain Turtle Success Rate: 0%
My Team Nicknames:
Domenic Mazza: Gunter (from Sing)
Stephen Woods Jr: Stevey Shutouts
Ben Smith : Big Country
Kip Adams: Franchise
Skylar Ewing: Big Tex
Nolan Riggs: Rolan
Pat Ruotolo: Patty Penguin
Some of the names here are maintained. I do not think it contains sensitive information, and I did not feel like randomly generating seven names just to pair them with below-average nicknames that I previously created
